Freedom only exists on the frontier one of those quotes that leads me to a state of serenity which is the opposite of those with a closed borders position which seams to lead only to the state. I’m trying to work out if open borders are the lesser of two evils, or not even evil at all.
You can hear the debate here .
–Note I have been hit in the head twice today by my son and am not in the best mood…
Erin’s already posted on this on her blog here and here. I’ve been puzzled by the border issue, I’d been pretty outspoken on the matter and likely in error. The problem is not so much the immigrants ( that’s not to say that unfettered immigration is without issues is just that I’ll get to that in a bit) but the system they are migrating to.
There were three speakers and Charles Goyette moderating ( the Minute man scheduled failed to show)
Against immigration Frosty Woolridge, good speaker but on more than one occasion reached into statement making rather than debating. For what it’s worth I believe his sincerity just not some of the logic.
Pro immigration Jacob “Bumper” Hornberger a founder of the Future for Freedom Foundation. You could spend a long long time reading through their output.
Pro reality 
Ricardo Valenzuela. Ah this guy rocks a former ambassador for Sonara , current advisor on economics to Mexico’s president elect and has no illusions re just how badly Mexico has failed its people, don’t laugh we can get there soon enough.
Sounds uneven? Well the other guy failed to turn up.
Frosty’s contention is that the US can’t sustain a population increase caused by allowing unfettered immigration, that the land can’t sustain it, the water tables wont last and a freeze of 10 years is needed prior to allowing 100k max a year in. Crime increase ( though I am not yet sure it’s because of the number of people or that immigrants just steal more ) and the accidental death resulting from immigrants ( again how much of this is a function of just having more people )
Bumper,
Nearly all straight freedom /trade all the way though using Eire as an economic success story bugs me given that it was the EU that gave it money after they agreed to stop being parochial jerks and might consider that priests are not the best “writers” of laws. He neatly smacked down the points that increased population = poverty ,which was pretty rudimentary free market economics, something that Frosty’s extensive world traveling hasn’t shown him a lot of apparently. Than again I’m not sure it’s an analog one can , or should, apply to the USA.
Ricardo,
Well he knows Mexico has failed it’s people, heck to the point that he’d like to see his home State of Sonora become independent, I’m pretty sure I’d like to see that myself, AZ too:) He used to drive freely from US to MX and back all the time without a problem or incident, now you can’t even drive within the US borders and not be stopped in the region for paper’s please ( illegal ) checkpoint. He appreciates that Mexico needs to do more, heck anything, other than be fundamentally corrupt and if his advice holds, and the new president of Mexico starts to get his free market / flat tax system it could be a very interesting place.
All in all a civil 90 minutes with good questions posed by Goyette that weren’t just going down the line repeating the same thing . I’m not going to give a play by play , you can watch the thing when it’s posted. I hate to steal the same joke from Erin re being on the fence, so I won’t but I’ve found that I can’t reconcile a locked down border with freedom on either side and that the measures to defeat it will have turned a police state into an overt police state. ( it’s tiny bit more comforting to pretend )
